Computers
Forewarning I am not an electrical or computer engineer, nor do I claim to be one. However I did taught myself a "bit" of the science behind the engineering a computer. These lessons may contain inaccuracies, inefficiencies and falsehoods. Not having a breadboard at my disposal, I've include code on how to emulate the individual components of a circuit. With a tiny amount of coding experiences anyone should be able to tinker around with emulators to design a virtual circuit. - Dan Introduction ToDo History ToDo on Charles Babbage and Bool. Lessons These lessons were design to walk you through how a computer functions and operates. Abstraction plays a key role in designing the internals of a computer and I've made an accompanying Java programs to give you a working model to see how the individual components work. I decided on using Boolean data types to hopefully make it easier to see how signals are processed within a computer system. Logic Gates Logic gates are an excellent real world application of Boolean algebra, plus it’s always fun to fiddle with bits. Going though this you'll see how to use AND, OR, and NOT gates to construct additional logic gates. Decoders ToDo Encoders ToDo Demultiplexers ToDo Multiplexers ToDo Feedback and Flip-Flops ToDo Binary Addition ToDo Memory ToDo Resources Wikipedia's Articles *Boolean Algebra *Boltzmann Constant *Circuit Diagram *De Morgan's Laws *Digital Circuit *Gaussian Elimination *Logic Gate *Maxwell Equation *Ohm's Law *Oscillator *Turing Machine *Two Element Boolean Algebra Books Code - The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software Code was written by Charles Petzold and is one of my favorite books that I ever read. The book is easy to digest and is filled with history lessons about the theory of communications. The Annotated Turing - A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine This is another one of Petzold’s books. I'm still working my way through this one but it's been a great read so far. This book was written to help anyone through Alan Turing's paper along with history lessons on the mathematics. Open Learning MIT OpenCourseWare I love OpenCourseWare, MIT makes the content from some of their classes publicly available. In the realm of electrical engineering, check out the courses 6.01 (Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I) 6.002 (Circuits and Electronics) Coursera Coursera is a relatively new creation. Universities such as Stanford, Princeton, Michigan and Pennsylvania came together to design free online classes. The selection is still limited compared to OpenCourseWare but you can still find great content here if you're patient. Coursera does have a class on computer architecture and logic that might be worth taking a look at. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The SEP is a publicly available encyclopedia by Standard that contains a wealth of information. The encyclopedia entries I've read where all top notch and extremely useful. Since we're in the realm of understanding computers, you should read this entry on Turing Machines when you have the time. Web Articles All About Circuits Integrated Circuit History Category:Computers